Hotel Street has aged less than gracefully since the rush of World War II and the days when sailors in white uniforms filled the streets and bars in Chinatown.
But on Thursday night a bit of prewar presence returned to Smith’s Union Bar.
Lauren Bruner and Lou Conter, two of just nine surviving crew members of the battleship USS Arizona, had some drinks, swapped stories, accepted the thanks of others and, of course, talked about girls at the bar advertised as the oldest on the island.
"Feels like I’m back home again," said a happy Bruner, 94, a bottle of Longboard beer within reach. "Lot of good memories."
Those memories preceded the bad ones, which started with Japanese planes appearing in the sky over Oahu on a sleepy Sunday morning 73 years ago on Dec. 7, 1941.
Bruner is one of just two survivors from the forward part of the Arizona, which was consumed in a fireball at 8:06 a.m. when a Japanese high-level bomber dropped a 1,760-pound armor-piercing bomb on the ship, according to the National Park Service.
The bomb penetrated the forward deck, and the resulting explosion ignited aviation fuel stores and the powder magazines for the 14-inch guns, instantly separating most of the bow from the ship and lifting the 33,000-ton vessel out of the water.
A total of 1,177 men were killed on the stricken battleship, and 334 survived.
The passage of seven decades has lifted some of that weight, and on Thursday it was the good times that came flooding back.
Four Arizona survivors are in town for Sunday’s remembrance of the attack, and Bruner talked his shipmate Conter into heading down to Smith’s.
Two others, John Anderson, 97, and Don Stratton, 92, weren’t able to make it.
Conter, 93, said he hadn’t been in Smith’s since 1941.
"Well, the bar is the same," Conter said. "The people are different. Remember, all of those days, all of the sailors wore their uniforms and had whites on, and all of the Army guys or Marines had their dress clothes on."
Bruner remembered the restroom being the same at Smith’s — only in words that are best not reprinted here.
And there were the bars downstairs in Chinatown and the rooms upstairs.
Conter had shore patrol duty a few days a week in the Hotel Street area with Pete Hozar, a water tender 1st class on the Arizona.
"We kept the peace with all the houses around here," Conter said. "The guys would have a few drinks, sometimes get a little rowdy, and we’d have to send them back to their base or something."
When he and Hozar came in, "we just said we’re going to be real tough from the very beginning so they get to know us," said the former sailor, who looks years younger than his actual age.
"In two weeks, two to three times shore patrol there, the word got out — Lou or Pete’s on duty, don’t argue with them, just do what they say," Conter said.
Conter was 5-foot-11, 175 pounds. Hozar was 6-foot-2, 240 pounds.
"So I didn’t have to worry too much," Conter said, laughing.
The Grass Valley, Calif., man dated the daughter of a dredging company vice president. Her parents "took care of me like their son, and I stayed out of trouble that way," Conter said.
Bruner and other men were in a fire control crow’s nest on the Arizona when the fireball engulfed the compartment. He sustained burns over 65 percent of his body but found the strength to climb hand over hand on a rope to the repair ship Vestal.
Conter was between the main mast and Turret 3, which protected him from the blast. He subsequently helped get the wounded onto watercraft for treatment.
Both men were the center of attention at Smith’s. Two carloads of relatives came with Conter to the bar.
"Lauren said, ‘Lou, you gotta go back down here (to Smith’s)’" Conter said. "So all my family, all the men, are here from my family."
Earlier in the day the Arizona survivors were at a luau at the Hale Koa Hotel. They are scheduled to sign autographs from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m. Saturday at the Arizona Memorial visitor center.
One after the other, individuals thanked Bruner and Conter for their service.
"Hello, sir, I want to thank you very much," 54-year-old Tom Sinnen, visiting Hawaii from Minnesota, told Conter.
"It means the world to me, these men," Sinnen said later. "They represent democracy and freedom more than any person I’ve ever met."
Conter had just one scotch and water.
"I used to have more than just one, but now I limit myself to one drink," he said. Five years ago he had five-way bypass surgery, he added.
Bruner, on the other hand, had a personal bartender in Smith’s owner Dwight Lockwood, who kept the Longboards coming.
Lockwood is the latest owner of the bar that became Smith’s in 1934, long before Bruner and Conter first encountered it.
"At that time it was Smith’s Union Bar," Lockwood said. "Prior to that it was called the Seaman’s Bar. And I don’t know when that started, per se, but it turned into Smith’s Union in 1934."
About 10 sailors on the Pearl Harbor Virginia-class submarine USS Texas were at Smith’s, and a handful of them held court with Bruner after Conter had left.
"Coming in here tonight and having a hero such as him being here — it’s amazing," said 23-year-old Machinist’s Mate 2nd Class Tyler Benson.
Bruner happened to be sitting beneath a black-and-white framed reprint of the burning and sinking Arizona, a photo he had signed previously and given to the bar.
Those memories are never far away for the man who said he was the second to last to leave the sinking Arizona.
The last was Alvin Dvorak. Both men, along with four others, climbed across the rope that was tied to the Vestal.
Bruner, who lives in La Mirada, Calif., still has thanks for the man who threw the rope, Joseph George, who was on the Vestal.
"When the bombs hit and the ship blew up, the skipper on the Vestal wanted to shove off because one bomb had gone straight on through the bottom so it was taking on water," Bruner said. "When George seen us stranded over there, he threw us a line, and the skipper told him, ‘Chop that line and get the hell out.’"
Ed McGrath, a friend of Bruner’s who’s working on a book about the Arizona crewman, said George refused, allowing Bruner and Dvorak, the final two Arizona crewmen, to get to safety.
For arguing with the captain, Dvorak was never recognized for saving six men, McGrath said.
"I still say he should have got a Medal of Honor," Bruner said.
